This weekend, conservatives meet at their annual love-in, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Forced by COVID restrictions in Maryland to look elsewhere for this year's venue, they appropriately chose Florida. So all the happy, right-wing campers have descended on Orlando for a steady diet of lies, hysteria, bombast, paranoia, science denial, buffets, and alcohol. Crazy has never been a bar to speaking — and this year some foreign ‘talent’ has drawn notice.
From Japan, Hiroaki Jay Aeba is giving a seminar for the tenth time at the event. This is his official biography on CPAC’s website
Hiroaki “Jay” Aeba, conservative commentator and columnist, is the chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union (JCU). Jay attended his first CPAC in 2011 and founded JCU in 2015 as a counterpart to the American Conservative Union (ACU).
In 2017, JCU and ACU co-hosted the first-ever international CPAC in Tokyo, where experts from across the Indo-Pacific met to discuss such critical issues as the economic and military security of the region in the face of Chinese expansionism, the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, the development and regulation of the cryptocurrency market, and the state of conservatism as a political philosophy in Asia.
Solid stuff. But behind the dry words lies a truth that CPAC does not reveal. Aeba is a cult-leader and science-denier. He is a significant figure in an organization called ‘Happy Science’. I’ll let Sarah Hightower, a researcher, and expert on Japanese cults describe it for us. As she told Vice News:
“Happy Science is a Japanese cult run by a man [Ryuho Okawa] who claims to be the incarnation of multiple Gods while pretending to channel the psychic spirits of anyone from Quetzalcoatl to Bashar al-Assad to Natalie Portman,”
Vice News adds: “While he has been a prominent member of the Happy Science cult from the beginning, Aeba has worked over the past decade on building close ties with prominent U.S. conservative figures and creating Japan’s Happiness Realization Party (HRP), the cult’s political wing that focuses on ultranationalism and increasing Japan’s population by making child-rearing easier for Japanese women.”
I love statistical promises because they are subject to numbers. So how did Happy Science do since its 2009 commitment to increasing the number of Japanese babies? Badly. So badly they were consistent with every other conservative broken promise. Japan’s 2009 birth rate of 8.620 per 1,000 people has tumbled to 2021’s rate of 7.205. A 20% decline.
Ryuho Okawa, a former stockbroker, founded Happy Science in 1986, He is regarded by his followers as the incarnation of El Cantare, a supreme being from Venus who created life on Earth millions of years ago. And if you think that sounds familiar consider Scientology.
In that religion's philosophy, Xenu, dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, brought billions of spirits to Earth in a spaceship 75 million years ago and killed them all with nuclear bombs, freeing Thetans, who have now adhered themselves to human beings.
Enough of that insanity. Where Happy Science and Scientology really mind-meld is in money-grubbing. The American version is famous for squeezing thousands of dollars out of its adherents through self-improvement classes and ‘auditing’. Happy Science makes its money by selling copies of Okawa’s innumerable books along with trinkets, knick-knacks, and geegaws. Its latest moneymakers are "spiritual vaccines" claimed to prevent and cure COVID-19, virus-related blessings costing up to $400, and coronavirus-themed DVDs and CDs of Ryuho Okawa lecturing, which are claimed to boost immunity.
It hasn’t cured a single instance of COVID — which is hardly a shock as religion’s promises have the same track record as conservatism’s.
It so obviously bullshit, even Happy Science founder’s son, Hiroshi Okawa, knows the truth of the matter. As he told the New York Times, "I believe what my father does is complete nonsense".
But conservatives won’t care. After all, they are in deep with QAnon, believe Democrats are trying to effect a communist coup, still think Trump won the election. And believe that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is a pro-gun, immigrant-hating, pro-conservative misogynist, who has a special hate for LGBTQ+. And they use as proof a book that says nothing of the sort.
Madness.